Update 37: Pipeline

Hi All!

This month we've been working on getting all the assets together ready for the the next scene, which is Sombra's Finale, her turn in the 'high yield' or 'intensive stimulation' centre.

This scene had been concepted/planned for some time, an inevitability really of the pseudo-storyline that 'The Box' series has been headed to, I figure I can't really set up sequels like I have that I'm not prepared to see through!

So whereas I had some idea of what I wanted to do in this scene, it usually takes some input/dedication from one of us to finalise and massage the idea into something worth developing.

Now luckily, with INOPRBL joining our staff full time, this is a job I can mostly leave to him now, and in an ideal circumstance once I reach the end of a production everything is set up and ready for me to sit down and start animating.

Over the years I've gotten better about making sure that things are lined up in a way that reduces, as much as possible this period of 'dead air' between productions. Stuff like ordering the voice work ahead of starting, using stand in or proxy ideas of the scene before the final models are complete (it's how I worked with the last scene)

For most of that production I was working with my own set of proxy mesh's, and only lit the environment once I had the final completed assets.

I can get a fair amount done without the whole scene but there's an acceptable minimum that's needed really for me to work within, it's pretty hard to get an idea of how to pace the scene if all you have is your model sat floating in a blank space!

In this case, since we've only just freed INOPRBL from the shackles of full time employment so he can focus on this work full time, we're still dealing with a little lag as he catches up, as good as the guy is, asset design and development is a very time intensive process, and is only becoming more intensive as our standards soar higher.

With all that said, I have a few looks at how this idea formed up over the last month:

This was my original concept for the scene, I knew I wanted her suspended from the ceiling (a pose that's been requested a fair bit in the past) and I knew it was going to be -intensive- milking, so we knew we needed to bring it.

So I sent that off to INOPRBL and I'll show you the concept he came back with in a moment, but there was a lot more details to establish between then and now.

We talked about the important bits, IE how she was going to be stimulated, those being, in our opinion, some of the most important aspects of our scenes, a milking scene needs a good milker!

Designing a good milker is always a struggle between wanting to show the details and mechanics of the device, whilst not obstructing too much of the view.

There's shortcuts that some people will take like, X-ray, which I'm not totally opposed to, but not yet found an implementation I can be absolutely happy with. I like my scenes to exist as grounded as possible, the idea being you can image that what we show is a window into the happenings of the universe, that what you see -could- exist.

So when people say 'do x ray!' my thought process usually goes along the lines of:

-OOh x-ray that would look cool! But how is this image produced?

-Is this a literal bone x-ray? in which case what's the resolution? what's the technology involved? Why would they -want- an x-ray of them? what is there to gain from it? Is it for monitoring purposes? How often is the image taken? What are the accommodations made to ensure the person being x-rayed isn't subjected to significant levels of ionising radiation? Maybe it's a cat scan technology? But that only works when the subject is perfectly still.. Well maybe at this point they're more advanced? But why dedicate that resource to this circumstance? If the image is being produced, why is it being overlayed into what we see through this 'camera?'

So yeah I've thought about x-ray, and we've not yet arrived at a satisfactory set of rules around it to use it.

However, we did come across a couple ideas that allowed us to accomplish the original goal, that being: Show a stimulating device without covering up too much of the subject. Those two technologies were soft robotics and quantum locking.

Enter milker concept:

We wanted a 'chamber' design for the tip, the idea here was a set of quantum locked magnets that would enable the device to expand and capture the genitals and move along them.

We took inspiration from the movements of Jellyfish when discussing how it might move, using the implication of expanding air channels and sacks to control itself without having to require bulky pistons, hinges or hard 'traditional' robotics.

The balls were also another area that is important to stimulate, but difficult to do visually, whilst INOPRBL iterated through the scene layout ideas I was considering how to adequately massage them for their yield, the above concept had us imagining a bag enclosing them, and that idea seemed fun, but a little basic.

It became clear at this stage that, more ideas are always better, so I dusted off blender to start messing with some ideas myself.

This was idea 1 following along with the bag plus cables route, some kind of badge to contain them. It looked alright but not what felt 'right' for this scene. We wanted a device that looked like it could give em a good 'tug'

Enter iteration 2 of the ball squeezulator, complete with some basic animation to demonstrate the idea at play.

I was a lot happier with this, but the hard connections were interfering with the concept of 'visually free' that we were going for.

This was not the final design we went with but this was playing along with the concept of us using quantum locking to control and position the device.

In the mean time, INOPRBL came back with an update on some scene design and had a preview for me:

Humbling skill gap aside, this made me realise a hard truth, I really needed to learn how to sculpt!

In the time It had taken me to iterate through 2-3 ideas of one device, he'd fleshed out a wonderfully detailed (still sculpt level resolution) scene idea, it was clear my method of box modelling my machine ideas had to change.

In the time I spent reeling over this he'd already put together a rough concept for the milker, I knew I had to do something to start filling it in.

The milker design was a fun one but not something I was 100% happy with, it didn't feel like it had enough that was playing with her. This scene is supposed to be a bit 'edge-ey' so I picked up the stylus and started to sculpt out some ideas.

This update is starting to get kind of long so I'll spare you the weeks of iterations that brought me to where we arrived today, materials and technical design aside, this is where I landed with how we wanted the milking bits to work.

Spurned on which just how rapidly sculpting allowed me to iterate through ideas I turned my attention to some of the other parts:

So back to the title of the post: Pipeline.

As it sounds, it's meant to be a representation of the path that a production takes from concept to finalisation.

I've mentioned before that we're taking steps to reduce this downtime, our plan as it stands at the moment is, once the assets for this scene are finished, INOPRBL can begin concepting and finishing the assets for the next.

A lot of what I've made so far over the years has been abandoned mostly never to be used again, due to a poor standard of rigging, or just a low quality or poorly realised idea.

I feel we're getting to the point now where the assets we make, are the ones we keep, and can therefore reuse! We're also taking a much more modular approach to how we build scenes.

Our hope being that, when it comes to moving between projects, it's not going to be a case of spending a couple months waiting for a coherent image to form, and is simply a case of sitting down and getting to work!

It's been a long road so far, and it's got a bit more to go before things run quite as smoothly as we'd like, but the continued support from you all is ensuring that, at least for now, this remains possible, We are ever fortunate to have such a dedicated fan base.

About A414

For those of you not quite up to date or, perhaps haven't seen my earlier works, either through preference or otherwise, this whole endeavour started with a very narratively driven, POV style sequential series.

It was the original Arc that I wrote that this whole universe was formed around, and I've gone back and fourth on revisiting it for a good amount of time now.

So much so that long standing members of the community have noticed, most amusingly to the point of making meme's about it:

I wanted to revisit this 'officially' I've mentioned it a few times in passing comments and replies on discord and such.

I have not forgotten about poor A414, he will be returned to, however in the time between his visits, the standards of the productions we put out has risen so sharply, It would be a significant step back for me to use the assets, models and such that I had in place when I originally wrote and animated EP5.

I can't, in all good conscience, at least with my own sense of moral integrity, release something of that standard and claim it's the best we can do right now.

The story and the arc contained within are very important to me, and it deserves to be realised in the best way we possibly can do it.

With the arc containing a lot of strong character moments, a reliance on non erotic segments, and the establishment of an understanding of the universe itself, along with it being a delivery method for a lot of the exposition we want to deliver, having seen the potential we now have with the extra staff involved, it wouldn't be right to proceed with it until we're ready.

The main foundation I'm waiting for is the finalisation of our in house -do everything- base mesh that our technical director has been slaving away at for the past 5-6 months, it's something we're going to close back in on, but we're just not there yet.

I want to see him back too, but I can't say when it will be as the constituent parts cannot, and should not, be rushed.

Another massive thank you to all my supporters for the continued dedication and patience.

More news as it comes, bye for now!